Reply to Can you remind me why my DC will not get into the same schools I did?

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Reply to "Can you remind me why my DC will not get into the same schools I did?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous](HYPSM)

Even if they are as intelligent and hard-working as I was?

Acceptancd rates are halved from 10% when I applied to 5% now. Can you remind me why that is?

Sorry, I’ve been out of college for 15 years and now have ES kids and don’t understand why it is so much more competitive all of a sudden.[/quote]

Here is the answer in a nutshell:

1.  The top schools stopped expanding their class sizes in the late 1980s, whereas they had expanded their freshmen classes nearly every year prior since the 1950s.  Therefore, there are nearly the same number of graduates from the T20 today as 30 years ago;
2.  The number of HS seniors available to apply has grown quite a bit over the last 40 years...we are now at the point where the HS population in the US is actually declining and will decline for the foreseeable future...it likely has peaked unless there is a miraculous turnaround in birth rates which is unlikely to happen (as PP mentioned...the number of kids going to college is actually significantly lower today vs. 10 years ago)
3.  The internet and the Common App made it much easier to apply to college.  Back in the hand-typed days there is no way you would apply to more than 5-6 schools...now it is fairly easy to apply to 20+ schools...so the theaverage number of applications per HS student increased significantly;
4.  TO created a whole new group of kids applying to the top schools that honestly would never have tried previously based on their ACT/SAT score;
5.  Schools exacerbate all this because they know their low acceptance rates convey prestige, so they really try to juice their applicant pool to then produce even lower acceptance rates;
6.  Schools aggressively started courting international students who are mainly full pay...this again created additional competition;
7.  In a sad commentary on how %ages work...many kids look at a 7% acceptance rate and think "well, if I apply to 13 schools, that means I will get accepted to 1"...it is crazy at the privates and top publics around here to hear of all the kids that are now desperately completing their application to ever Ivy-league school...which is almost guarnteeing they will get accepted at exactly zero of those schools because those applications are fairly involved and there is no chance those kids are giving each application the thought, time and attention they require

So...there you have it.

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